Recently an increasing number of organizations are switching from using their own computing infrastructure to using network computing infrastructure operated and managed by a service provider (e.g., a third-party service provider). For example, a company typically employs an agent (e.g., an information technology (IT) administrator) to set up and manage the company's own on-premises servers that host electronic mail services or other services for the employees of the company. Recently, however, it can be more cost effective to have a service provider host the service using network computing infrastructure.
Onboarding refers to a process and/or a mechanism that helps a client organization (e.g., may also be referred to as a customer or a tenant) set up a service on network computing infrastructure that is operated and managed by a service provider. In many instances, setting up the service on the network computing infrastructure comprises moving at least part of a service from a client organization's own computing infrastructure to the network computing infrastructure. The goal of onboarding is to effectively and efficiently configure the service on the network computing infrastructure so that the client organization is fully engaged and individual devices within the client organization are capable of interacting with the service after the service has been onboarded (e.g., an employee device can access an electronic mailbox hosted by a cloud server instead of, or as an alternative to, an on-premises server).
Onboarding typically requires a large amount of tasks that must be implemented, for example, by an agent (e.g., an IT administrator) of the client organization. For instance, a client organization is typically provided, at the beginning of the onboarding process, with a long and exhaustive list of different tasks (e.g., over two hundred tasks), individual ones of which may not even be necessary and/or relevant to onboarding a particular service to network computing infrastructure in accordance with expectations of the client organization. This list of different tasks is often pre-ordered and is the same for all client organizations, regardless of a size of the client organization and regardless of client expectations associated with onboarding the service.
Consequently, many client organizations have a difficult time navigating through the onboarding process to not only identify relevant tasks to be completed, but also to determine an optimal and efficient order for completing the relevant tasks. Rather, the list of different tasks typically provided to a client organization at the beginning of the onboarding process provides limited or no guidance and the order in which the tasks are to be completed is not effectively updated during the onboarding process. This leads to client disengagement from the onboarding process.